Today Roxy and I were going to finish up getting her T56 back in. After we got the input shaft snug and started tightening up the trans to bellhousing bolts, I noticed one giving me trouble and when I looked around the other side, I found the problem. The bolt thread just underneath the clutch fork only goes halfway into the bellhousing material and also comes up about 1/2" short too. Not sure how we missed this, but I had only given the parts a cursory look-over when they came in. Even more alarmingly, how did McCleod QC miss this?

In any case, here are the pics. This shows what it looks like looking towards the front of the car:



And then this is what we found on the other side of the clutch fork area:



Is there any hope of salvaging this somehow (maybe having someone weld up that hole as much as possible and then re-tap it?) or should Roxy just deal with undoing it all and having McCleod send her a new part?

 

Use a shorter bolt, or just drill a relief hole there or something. It isn't that hard. There's no QC at a place like that.

I talked this over with Roxy later and it may be possible to use a stud in that threaded hole, then a washer/nut on the trans side.

 

what size bolt is it?

maximum thread depth only needs to be 1 1/2 times the diameter of the bolt.... 3/8 (.375)bolt only needs 9/16 (.562) depth of thread..

i would be more concerned with that weld in the bottom picture... i've seen high school kids that could weld better than that... dont see how the hell that would pass and get an sfi sticker... that weld is absolute crap..

 

You're really good if you can eyeball the tensile strength of a weld, let alone one that has been painted on top of.

 

thats not paint thats plating..
and yes the weld looks like crap, even over the internet..